“Bones Be Still”

I see murmuring bones in deep water,
awaiting the final rites to rest.

O undead, fathers’ bones,
make the Atlantic your home,

but they wail and curse:

We were sacrificed
to give you life!

Lips remember no songs,
hands no rituals, all I have
are headache dreams.
The sea swells into a hurricane,
the land blackens into cancer,
lightning opens a heart
in the sky, like a boy opening
the window of a hot room
his mother died in.

O undead, why wrath?
I don’t know the path.

They answer in thunder:

You ungrateful New World,
too selfish to know the Word.

The Word? I don’t know.
The bones stop speaking.